Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler’s top deputy was exonerated from accusations of misconduct in an investigative report released this week.

Patricia Petersen, an administrative law judge for the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) had accused Chief Deputy Insurance Commissioner James Odiorne of improperly trying to influence the outcome of her cases.

But a report conducted by Patrick Pearce, an attorney for Seattle-based Ogden Murphy Wallace law firm, concludes that Odiorne did not commit ex parte, or improper, contact with the judge.

“I believe the report supports the actions I took to protect the integrity of the legal proceedings brought before my office,” Kreidler said in a statement. “And (the investigation) was the most impartial and unbiased way to look into all of the allegations.”

The case has sparked a larger discussion in Olympia about how independent administrative law judges can be, since they’re presiding over cases against the very state agencies that employ them.

“If the judge always has to rule for the agency, an OIC hearing will essentially be an expensive sham,” wrote Phil Talmadge, a Seattle attorney representing Petersen.

Petersen claimed Odiorne began in September 2013 a pattern of improperly trying to influence the outcome of her decisions. One of the cases before her involved Seattle Children's Hospital and was related to rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

Further, Pearce’s report said that if Petersen did feel she was subject to ex parte, she should have notified parties in her cases much sooner than the May 13, 2014, filing that first notified parties in a case she was overseeing.

The investigation also found that: “Unlike other administrative law judges, the hearing examiner’s authority is entirely derived from and through the Commissioner.”

Talmadge, a former state Supreme Court Justice who is representing Petersen, released a statement saying the investigative report was whitewashing the truth of what happened.

“If the agency always wins, what’s the point? It’s as if the cop who writes you a ticket also gets to be the judge when you want to contest it,” Petersen’s attorneys wrote.